All Questions

I was waiting for someone to piece both of these questions together into another question. @Dragongeek was the first, Could a solar panel be modified to create a static charge while spinning to remove ...

In the beginning of Scott Manley's new video The First Commercial Lunar Spacecraft - 20 Years before Israel & Beresheet he takes a moment to talk about recent Falcon Heavy core falling off the ...

This Is a question that was buzzing me, but since every meter of altitude a rocket consume an absurd amount of fuel, wouldn't be more efficent launching rocket from higher altitudes? Thinking to ...

I am in love with the images available at https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ taken from the DSCOVR satellite. I am curious though as to why some dates are unavailable to select. The calendar date picker ...

After asking Have astronauts in space suits ever taken selfies? If so, how? I started to think about the photo below, and especially the cropped and rotated section that I found in the Wikipedia ...

As discussed in Infrared space interferometry - Why isn't it being done? the space-based radiotelescope Spektr-R has been used in Very Long Baseline Interferometry or VLBI. See also What are Spectr-R'...

Under the question What are Spectr-R's major contributions to radio astronomy that could not have been done from Earth? there is a new comment that points (again) to the BBC News article Spektr-R: ...

Obviously this is very statistical. Basically I'm looking for an order of magnitude. One geostationary satellite would cause a pinball effect or would it be more like 10 satellites? I'm concerned ...

This answer to the question Whats the protocol if two satellites collide? shows the image below, and I don't understand the shape. I would have expected two "jets" of debris, each projecting roughly ...

The Antares is unusual in that it's using solid-fuel in the second stage. I was surprised about that and a couple of questions immediately popped up which are already covered on this site: How can a ...

The image below is cropped from https://i.stack.imgur.com/4XFaJ.jpg as described in this answer. It shows a geographic state of a space shuttle at a given instant in time. There is only one value for ...

I'm trying to find the temperature of a CubeSat in orbit at 140km. I'm trying to use the Stefan-Boltzmann law but don't know how to incorporate the energy from sunlight. I'm using this as a check for ...

I want to say fuel is, but this Question Why isn't stainless steel used for rocket engines? has got me thinking about cost in the long run. What part commonly found on most rockets cost the most ...

How does a solid fuel liquid oxidizer hybrid rocket work? How do they throttle them up and down? Virgin Galactic plans to use a hybrid engine, and I was also wondering how they were planning to store ...

To the question If mice escaped on the International Space Station, could they live and thrive? both the answer and comments point out that while mice escaped from an experiment might survive a while ...

Partially inspired by this uhoh question on SciFi.SE In writing up my answer, I came across this interview Clarke gave to NPR in 2008 where this quote is made While Clarke came up with the idea of ...

I know that radio waves travel at the speed of light in vacuum so the minimal latency to communicate between Earth and Moon would be about 1.25 second each way. This latency figure will then increase ...

I've seen a fast spinning glass wheel used in front of a camera to clear away water, dust or ice. Could Solar panels be made circular and spin to clear dust off of them in the same way may? Could ...

This helicopter is producing static electricity from the blades moving through the dusty air. Along with the electricity provided by wind generators could additional power be created this way from ...

Is it possible one day to see landing site flags on the Moon from Earth or from space without having to land using a telescope as technology progresses? Highly Related: Were the Apollo lunar ...

I'm currently trying to write a program that can calculate orbital trajectories. The goal is to take any orbital state vector (position, velocity) and convert it into Keplerian orbital elements, or ...

I understand astronauts' helmets have dichroic optical filters to protect from many different frequencies of EM radiation. Do the filters prevent the astronaut from feeling warmth on their skin when ...

Since the first spacewalks were preformed, have there been any spacecraft that didn't allow for a spacewalk?

Could the Apollo astronauts have done an eva, from the Command Module, during the flight to or from the Moon?

On the second flight of the Falcon Heavy, they successfully landed the side cores at LZ-1 and LZ-2, and the center core downrange on the ASDS Of Course I Still Love You. Reports have come in that ...

The SciNews video Mice aboard the International Space Station is fun to watch for those tired of the same old rocket launch videos. Behavior of mice aboard the International Space Station 20 ...

An alternative storyline to the Mars transport architecture: Tankers refuel starship, last Tanker gets mounted on the Starship for the Mars orbital injection burn, once on a Martian trajectory tanker ...

In an article by Rahn and Barba, in which a flat-spin transition manoeuvre is investigated, the following figure is presented: I'm trying to reproduce this figure by integrating the following coupled ...

This answer links to this NASA page. The first video shows the two STEREO spacecraft use two and three passes by the Moon to leave Earth orbit and enter into an orbit around the sun. Below is a GIF ...

SpaceX loses the center core of its Falcon Heavy rocket due to choppy seas While I thought my question How vulnerable could space launch vehicles be to a “lone gunman”? was just my tangential ...

How would 1 spacecraft be launched to have a prograde orbit and the another be launched retrograde to have a mirrored orbital path around the sun or otherwise? Would the 2 spacecraft launch together ...

Could 2 JWST be launched in opposite directions to provide stereo vision? Would a stereo picture provide any benefit? https://space.stackexchange.com/a/35402/18879 Related: How will JWST manage ...

I am working on a project for science fair that involves a deployable component that will not be heated on a CubeSat. I am trying to find data for the skin temperature of a satellite (or the ISS) over ...

JPL News item NASA's Cassini Reveals Surprises with Titan's Lakes NASA's Solar System Dynamics New item Cassini Reveals Surprises with Titan's Lakes point out that some lakes on Titan have been ...

Would the optimal time to launch be when the Moon was on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun? What direction would be optimal leaving EM-L2, radially away from the moon? Is the last line of ...

From this answer to the question What artificial satellite has the farthest orbit around the Earth?: I found the following "far out" spacecraft: TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) ...

I am wondering why we don't use jet engines as first stages. Most small rockets, like the Electron, can lift off with a small thrust. In the Electron's case, 192 kN. Why can't we replace the 9 ...

In the past, I could see space shuttle launches from my front door on the gulf coast of Pinellas County by looking due east on a clear day or night. I have tried to catch Space-X launches a couple ...

Would geostationary satellites be pushed to different orbits by changes in the magnetic filed or even more so by shifting poles or even a reversal?

I was reading on wiki about Voyager 1 mission and I found very interesting! One thing I did not manage to find: what is the signal Voyager 1 is sending to us? Is it simply a sinewave or something more ...

Reading this question and answers, I wondered what would happen if there was no atmosphere, everything else being the same on Earth. What would be the payload capacity to LEO of Falcon 9 in reusable ...

Some rockets, mainly (only?) ICBMs have Aerospike nosecones Why are they preferred in lieu of traditional nose cones? Illustrations: An aerospike nosecone on a trident ICBM Video including the ...

With the Stratolaunch flying this week I was interested in seeing how good it was compared to a Falcon9. I figured comparing energy contribution would make sense. The stats as best I can find: ...

I was watching the livestream of the SpaceIL team when they were attempting to land Beresheet on the Moon. As near as I can remember, at around an altitude of 15km above the surface, the SpaceIL ...

I would like to have free or low-cost access to an existing CubeSat (educational satellite) for educational purposes. I wish to familiarise myself with the end to end command & control activities, ...

How rigorous was training for Space Shuttle payload specialists? These astronauts were not selected from the normal astronaut pipeline, but instead were people with clout (politicians), PR ...

Where are the stars in the Apollo 11 photographs. It look unnatural without stars with a black celestial background.

The Event Horizon Telescope seems to include these radio telescopes currently: Image by European Southern Observatory (ESO)/O. Furtak; CC-BY 4.0-licensed, see the source on Wikipedia Commons and the ...

I would like to know the different physics concept I would need to land a rocket being in orbit. I know the timing is important to leave it, how can one find this out ? Then how to compute the ...

What interstellar propulsion system has the highest potential for being the safest, most efficient, and can get around to the nearest stars, within a human lifetime (say reach 20–50% the speed of ...